What a great time we had. A full day of mutually shared information among some of Florida’s most enthusiastic high school senior photographers. April 15th, we gathered at the Doubletree Hotel in Tampa and spent the day photographing seniors and learning how the Bumper Shot is the newest, most popular look that seniors are looking for.

Newsome’s Studio began creating Bumper Shots for seniors and commercial clients about two years ago. It quickly caught on as an exciting new look and both seniors and their parents are loving it.

A Bumper Shot is a television industry term, describing the still shot of the host and/or musical guest, sandwiched between the end of a commercial break and the return of the show, usually only on the screen for all of three seconds. Saturday Night Live is the most popular user of the “The Bumper Shot.”

Here are some of the Bumpers we created during the Bumper Shot Seminar…

I’m one very lucky Uncle. I have seven nieces and five nephews, and I have now photographed every single one of them for their senior portraits.

It became “an event” years ago, to make a trip to see Uncle Kevin for a full weekend to have their senior pictures taken, but always involved much more than an hour or two in the studio. We’d do the traditional studio session, then go out on location for something interesting… the beach, Ybor City, University of Tampa, downtown, a park… Then, of course, we’d hit a Rays/Yankees game, visit the Clearwater Marina, or do something that was just plain fun.

Well, of the dozen Newsome kids who call me “Uncle,” the last one just spent the weekend here for his senior pictures (all but two of my nieces and nephews hail from Atlanta).

Josh is the caboose of the train, and didn’t disappoint. We shared a ton of laughs, I told him stories about his dad (my brother) he’d never heard (always fun to reveal some hidden family secrets), we hit the movies, toured the Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, and lunched and dined all around town.

He’s an experienced kayaker, so when I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago, I took advantage of the opportunity to begin the senior session with images I knew we couldn’t do when he came to Tampa.

The rest were taken all over the Bay area, and of course, no senior session is complete without a few of our famous Bumper Shots. Here are some of my favorite images of Josh Newsome’s senior portrait session…

Tampa’s Bumper Shot Photographer

The high school senior picture season is just getting underway, and there will soon be a mad rush to get an appointment with your school’s contracted yearbook photographer. I feel for those poor guys – they have to shuffle no less than 10k students past their camera in a few short months. They beef up their staff for the summer, then thin it back out by fall. Wow.

Fortunately for independent professional photographers like Newsome’s, we have the luxury of scheduling as much time as necessary to provide high school seniors with what they really want – a chance to be photographed like the star they are!

Thus, was born, the Bumper Shot!

At Newsome’s Studio, we provide the traditional, classic, head & shoulders in a tux or drape (but always on a classic black background, never BLUE!), then we do a few casual images in outfits our seniors bring, and then… we launch into the BUMPER SHOT!

In the television industry, a Bumper Shot (also known as an ID Bumper), is the image that “bumps” up against the return of a show from commercial break. It often lasts all of three seconds, but features the show’s logo and guest host or musical guest for that particular show. You’ll see it five to six times during every episode of Saturday Night Live.

This is where our seniors get the opportunity to break with tradition, and really ham it up for the camera. Props are encouraged, anything from a jar of peanut butter to a lampshade have been brought in and utilized. It helps to be animated, comedic, and playful, which our seniors today seem to have no problem with.

So, if you’re a high school senior, feel free to tap your “inner guest host persona,” bring us a banana, a Mother Goose book, or a tool from the garage, and let’s have a bit of fun creating your own personal Bumper Shot!

I have a deep admiration for the work done by Mary Ellen Matthews, the talented artist behind the lens for the SNL bumper shots each week. A bumper shot is the image you see of that week’s guest host or musical guest, that appear for all of three seconds as the show returns from commercial.

Mary Ellen Matthews has been creating those images since 1999, and her body of work to date, is an incredible gallery of musical, theater, and political icons of the last twenty years. Celebrity subjects aside, the images are fun, creative, zany, off-the-wall, dramatic, and utilize a slightly softer color palette than Peter Max used when stormed the art world in the 60’s.

The beauty in her assignment, is that she is working with professionals. She has an incredible team surrounding her, a world class wardrobe and prop department, and the most animated human beings on the planet – all with a terrific sense of humor and are game for anything. Some are among the most beautiful beings on the planet, some are as cosmetically challenged as the rest of us, but ALL are willing have some fun and mug it up for Mary Ellen’s lens.

This got me thinking… who among MY world as a professional photographer/studio owner would/could/might fit into that category? Who are my most animated clients? Who would mug it up for the camera? Who would enjoy the challenge of taking a common household object and turning it into an improv routine, just long enough for me to light, compose, and capture an image that could very well be THEIR bumper shot in life?

High School Seniors, that’s who.

So my challenge is on. My on-going project for the next few weeks is to photograph a handful of students and feebly and humbly attempt to create a bumper shot or two for each of them. With all due respect to the genius of Mary Ellen Matthews and her creative team, I know good and well that I can never fully re-create the incredible look that has gained her recognition on SNL, but my knock-off bumper shots are still a lot of fun for my seniors and worth the attempt.

A Second Web Site for Newsome’s Studio

If one website is a good thing, two must be better, correct? Well, we’ll soon find out!

I’ve owned the domain name www.newsomesstudio.com for over 20 years now. The only trouble with it, is that my email address (kevin@newsomesstudio.com) is often misspelled when someone new is sending me an email. They often leave out an “s,” and I never received the email. Sometimes it bounces back to them, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, the mistake happens often enough for me to finally break down and do something.

By buying www.newsomestudio.com (with only one “s” in the middle), I could now create an email account to match (kevin@newsomestudio.com) and redirect any emails that are sent there to my original email account.

So Why Not a Whole New Web Site?

Great question. Why not? So I took Kira Derryberry‘s WordPress for Photographers, four day class at the FPP sponsored Florida Photography Workshops in Daytona this past June, and in no time at all I had a completely different website. Some images are the same, some are new, but it allows me one more opportunity to occupy another position on page one of any number of Google searches. And that’s the best part; the SEO techniques I learned, along with the new tools available to me as my own WordPress site designer, have given me a whole new perspective on what and how to reach my target audience via the Internet.

Armed with two websites, five blogs, and five domain names, I’m positioning Newsome’s Studio to be found more often, and without the added expense/frustration of paying for and working with an outside Google adword salesman.

Results are already promising, but I know the payoff doesn’t happen overnight. All I can do is try, and without trying, nothing ever gets done. I see Google as a charter fishing boat. They only allow ten lines in the water at a time (page one). Why step on board with only one fishing pole? I’m not here to fish, I’m here to catch.

Hop on over and browse around. If you like what you see, land a comment on my blog. If you don’t, just go away – you’ll scare the fish.

Dept of Army Military Photos for Retired Personnel

We used to get a lot of requests to create military”promotion photos” years ago when the studio was located in South Tampa near MacDill AFB. These days, the official DA Photo is done digitally on base by the base photographer, and uploaded to the DA Photograph Management Information System (DAPMIS) on the spot.

We can no longer create this for active duty use, however, for retired military personnel who are in need of a print that conforms to the same specs, we can provide it to match those specs exactly. The most common reason a retired personnel might be in need of an image that matches the official DA photo specs, is when they’re applying for a job as a contracted ROTC or JROTC instructor.

NOTE: Our “Newsome’s” logo you see at the bottom of this image, will NOT appear in the final print.

And I humbly and gratefully offer a 10% discount off all our photography services to any active military personnel.

Objective: Client needed an environmental headshot/bio photo that can/will be used in an ad pieces and web pages. Verbiage to be on the left, image on the right. Semi-nondescript background blown out of focus.

Solution: Utilized select locations in an urban settings for background colors, combining (primarily) available light with reflectors and some supplemented modified flash. Kept client’s shoulders facing to camera left, into the image, offset by one third, leaving room for ad verbiage. One image cropped square to be used for LinkedIn/Facebook/etc.

A wall of Bougainvillea provided color

A square crop will provide a great bio photo for LinkedIn and other social media sites.